Spain Enhances Smart City with eLTE Solution

There are a large number of children that go missing in the world every year. The first 24 hours is the crucial time to locate them. A missing child case in Rivas-Vaciamadrid would not have been solved so quickly if an elLTE Broadband Trunking Solution was not used. How did the police officers solve this case?

In front of Rivas-Vaciamadrid, Spain’s Jose Saramago school gate, a father was anxiously seeking help to find his child from a police officer patrolling near the school. The police officer immediately called the command center for support and used his handheld eLTE terminal to photograph the child’s pictures stored in the father’s mobile phone. He then transmitted the captured photo to the command center.

Upon receiving this incident, Rivas-Vaciamadrid Police Station’s command center took immediate action to address the situation. They quickly located the nearest patrol vehicles through their command system, dispatched them to the field, and sent the child’s photo and missing child alert to the handheld eLTE terminals of all the police officers in that region. At the same time, the command center searched for any traces of the child by invoking real-time video feeds shot by surrounding cameras. Less than half an hour later, a police officer found a child in a nearby basketball court and immediately used his handheld eLTE terminal to start a video call with the father. After confirmation this child was the one missing, the father and son were reunited.

Challenges

The City’s ‘Nervous System’ Urgently Receives Smart Upgrades

Rivas-Vaciamadrid is a city in the community of Madrid, Spain. The city covers an area of 67.4 square kilometers with a population of approximately 84,000. This city has one of the youngest populations in the Madrid region, with the average age of citizens as 34. It is also one of the most environmental-friendly and sustainable cities. In 2014, Rivas-Vaciamadrid won the European Union’s Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning (SUMP) Award.

Rivas-Vaciamadrid is a founding member of the Spanish Network of Smart Cities (RECI) and is widely recognized as a pioneering ‘Smart City’ in Spain. Currently, Rivas-Vaciamadrid has a network of 800 kilometers of fiber-optic cables which interconnects 86 municipal buildings, and provides public Wi-Fi services for the entire locality.

Pedro del Cura Sanchez, Mayor of Rivas-Vaciamadrid, said: “In 2004, the city decided to start investing in technology. There were two important factors to determine this investment. The first factor was to create a better-managed city with enough technology resources for more efficient city management and greater savings. The second factor was to better serve citizens with these technology resources.”

The objectives of Rivas-Vaciamadrid coincide with Huawei’s goals of smart city administration: Increased benefits to citizens and economic revitalization for customers who build smart cities.

A Smart City is like a living organism powered by a nervous system. A Smart City ‘nervous system’ consists of a ‘brain’ (the control center) and ‘peripheral nerves’ (the network and sensors). This system gathers real-time information about the status of the city, transmits the data, enables the ‘brain’ to analyze and make informed decisions, delivers feedback commands, and ultimately performs intelligent actions.

The legacy ‘nervous system’ of the Rivas-Vaciamadrid government was a TETRA network they had built in 2005. This legacy network had the following issues:

The TETRA narrowband only provided voice services and did not support multimedia data applications, such as a real-time Geographic Information System (GIS) and mobile surveillance. As a result, this network failed to meet the requirements of government and police agencies for video and large-traffic data usage.

The incident receiving and handling systems were not integrated. This isolation slowed down emergency response and created difficulties in cross-department collaboration.

The legacy network was more than 10 years old and was approaching End-of-Life (EoL). The resulting maintenance costs were high.

Due to the shrinking narrowband industry chain, the correct evolution direction was difficult to recommend.

The Rivas-Vaciamadrid government urgently needed to upgrade their existing network and decided to build new smart city ‘nervous system’ functions that would cover the entire city, command more efficiently, and dispatch services for 330 police officers.

Solution

Improved On-Site Visibility and Command More Efficiently

Huawei is one of a few vendors in the industry that provides a holistic set of ICT solutions characterized by cloud-pipe-device synergy. Huawei’s eLTE Broadband Trunking Solution provides professional services, such as video backhaul, broadband trunking, and critical communications, on a single network to enable visualized dispatching. This solution is primarily intended for the public safety sector and extends to smart cities with integrated access network platforms to other sectors, establishing a solid foundation for additional smart city applications.

After careful consideration of multiple factors, the Rivas-Vaciamadrid government selected Huawei’s eLTE Broadband Trunking Solution to upgrade their legacy network.

The Command Center can review videos sent back in real time from eLTE terminals or directly watch the live video images captured by city-wide surveillance cameras. By doing so, the Command Center remotely can accurately assess on-site conditions and effectively manage on-site incidents. Additionally, by leveraging GIS to locate people and vehicles, the Command Center can designate the most appropriate police resources and achieve visualized dispatching.

The handheld eLTE terminals can be installed with the police station’s Intranet office software, covering email, video surveillance, and police dispatching. These installations implement better-connected mobile police operations and provide enriched police dispatch information through multimedia police dispatching tickets. In the case of emergencies, nearby police officers can collaborate with each other in real time. In this way, police dispatching and incident handling are more accurate and efficient.

The eLTE broadband trunking system can interwork with the legacy TETRA system and communicate with public-network mobile phones. High compatibility achieves the convergence of multiple network communication methods and more efficient cross-department communication and collaboration.

The eLTE broadband trunking network can be interconnected with the public network to implement public network coverage in areas with insufficient private network coverage. This interconnection expands the scope of applications and reduces the initial investment. In this way, investments can be gradually increased to improve coverage and data capabilities.

To address spectrum problems, Huawei collaborates with Masmovil, the fourth largest mobile carrier in Spain, to provide a 2.6 GHz frequency band; Huawei teams up with the live-network integrator Tecnicas Competitivas who provides eLTE broadband trunking delivery and maintenance services; and Huawei works with the wireless planning consulting firm Aptica to provide network planning, technical consultation, and recommendations for the project.

Fernando Argote Cardenosa, the Director of the Rivas-Vaciamadrid police station, stated: “The Command Center provides advantages which are clearly beneficial to Rivas-Vaciamadrid citizens. From here, we control the city traffic. For many public safety incidents, such as missing children, we find that the Huawei eLTE Broadband Trunking Solution is crucial. The most important thing for public safety is enabling the Command Center to respond quickly.”

Benefits

Smart City Services Reach New Levels

Currently, 80 percent of the Rivas-Vaciamadrid area benefits from the eLTE network coverage. What makes the Rivas-Vaciamadrid city distinct from other cities is that all the city management systems are highly converged. Almost all city facilities that can be remotely managed are networked, including video surveillance, energy management, public lighting, decorative fountains, street-side public resources, and park irrigation facilities. The local government also provides location-based services, so that city managers can globally access applications anytime, from any device through Wi-Fi access using Bidi, RFID, and NFC.

Carlos Ventura, the Director of Rivas-Vaciamadrid’s Telecommunication Department, mentioned: “The evolution from narrowband to broadband is an inevitable trend. Huawei’s eLTE network solution is well integrated with all the systems in the city, especially with the Rivas-Vaciamadrid Smart City project. From an eLTE terminal, you can access any system in the city, such as public lighting. In the event of an emergency, police officers and other city managers may increase lighting and perform any other actions, such as opening doors or buildings via the eLTE terminal without the need for keys or other assistance.”

Ana Reboiro, a member of the Economic Development and Employment Council and Interior System and Telecommunications Council, said: “The new eLTE network developed by Huawei and our Rivas-Vaciamadrid City Council provides voice, video, and information services for the city’s security and emergency response. This new network is the foundation for addressing new challenges in urban development and will improve the daily lives of Rivas-Vaciamadrid citizens. This is the first-of-its-kind project in Spain. Once again, Rivas-Vaciamadrid leads the development of new technologies for city services. I would like to thank Huawei for the trust that they have placed in the Rivas-Vaciamadrid City Council. I hope that we can continue to work together on developing new technologies to respond to new challenges in the future.”

In the future, Huawei will continue to work with ecosystem partners to help Rivas-Vaciamadrid add visibility to daily city operations, accelerate cross-departmental emergency response and Big Data-based city management decisions, and further enhance the operations of public services such as education, sports, energy, and public safety. All these enhancements will create a solid foundation for the ongoing smart city journey of Rivas-Vaciamadrid.